


The Also-Rans

by Sinanju



Category: Highlander (Movies), Highlander - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-31
Updated: 2012-05-31
Packaged: 2017-11-06 09:28:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/417324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sinanju/pseuds/Sinanju
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone knows the names of the finalists in The Game: Fasil. Castagir. The Kurgan. Connor MacLeod. But there were plenty of other immortals in the running, though most of them didn't make it to New York City. A few did, but didn't last. They are the Also Rans. This is the story of one such.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Also-Rans

**Portland, Oregon - 1985**

The Brown Jug was a small tavern built, it appeared, in the 30s, when architecture that reflected the building's purpose was all the rage. It was a jug, a two story round building complete with a decorative finger loop at the top. It sat on a small trapezoidal lot just big enough the building and a small gravel parking lot.

The door of the Jug had a weathered white sticker on it at eye level, prohibiting entry by anyone under twenty-one. I pulled the door open and stepped in. There was a cheap plywood barrier just inside the door, preventing anyone outside from catching a glimpse of anything within the tavern. I let the door close behind me. Metallica washed over me.

Stepping to my left, I got a look at the place. A step up to the left was a well-stocked bar separated from the rest of the place by a railing. To the right the room was dominated by a circular stage. It was surrounded by a doughnut shaped table for drinks. A dozen men sat around the stage watching the show.

The show consisted of a woman with brittle blonde hair writhing nude on the platform. She moved mechanically, and she was deaf, or had no interest in the beat of the music accompanying her. She wore a bored expression on her face.

Her audience seemed quite happy with the show anyhow.

None of them was Coombs. I stepped up into the bar and caught the bartender's eye. "Dos Equis," I said. He retrieved a bottle from the cooler, flipped the top off and set it on the bar.

I slid a twenty toward him. "You the regular guy?" I asked him. He looked me over for a moment, then nodded.

"I'm looking for a guy, tall, broad shoulders, dark hair. Goes by the name of Coombs. I heard he hangs out here."

The bartender looked over my shoulder, then down at the twenty, and then looked behind me again. I released the twenty and turned around. Coombs stood in a narrow hallway I hadn't seen initially. Of course. The place was two stories tall--he'd been upstairs.

He had been studying the other patrons of the bar and now he turned his attention to me. And I could tell by his body language that he felt it too, the electrical shock of recognition. The tingling in the extremities, almost painful in the fingers; the racing heartbeat and quickening of breath.

He was an immortal.

And so was I.

But there could be only one.

A huge grin appeared on his homely face. He stepped toward me, reaching into his large leather jacket with his left hand. I moved away from the bar, my own hand disappearing into my jacket to reappear a moment later with a Desert Eagle .45 pistol. Coombs paused, a twinkle of laughter in his eyes, then dived for cover behind the stage. I blew a hole in the wall behind him.

The dancer, her bare ass toward me, one hand idly moving between her legs, whipped her head around to stare back over her shoulder. Then she shrieked and rolled to one side, scrabbling over the edge of the stage past two stunned patrons. I could see who among the clientele here had good survival instincts. 

I took this opportunity to step behind the bar and crouch down.

"Who are you?" Coombs shouted from behind the stage.

"Jafar Al-Mansur," I replied. "And you?"

In response, Coombs popped up and sprayed down my cover with small arms fire. A machine pistol! He had a machine pistol! Shattered glass and alcohol spilled on the floor behind and around me.

Coombs shouted something at me, but the blaring heavy metal music, screaming dancer and patrons, and the ringing in my ears from the gunfire made it incomprehensible. The crowd was bunched around the exit, struggling to push their way out en mass. The bartender was cowering against the wall as far from me as he could get.

"Now what?" Coombs shouted.

"You could stand up and take it like a man," I suggested.

Coombs laughed. "I don't think so," he said at last. "You?"

I took a shot at him, hoping to score a hit through the table.

"I guess not," Coombs shouted.

He popped up at the other side of the stage and fired another burst at me. One shot smashed the pistol, ripping it out of my hand and breaking my trigger finger. Ducking, I hoped he hadn't seen or heard the result. I listened for a moment, but could hear little.

I risked a quick look. He was still hidden. I eased back behind the bar, grasped my finger and jerked it back into proper alignment. A few moments of pain and then it eased.

A shuddering of the floorboards warned me that Coombs had run out of patience. I scrambled around the end of the bar just as Coombs landed heavily on its surface and swept the area behind the bar with the machine pistol, emptying another magazine. The bartender screamed and thrashed, then slumped.

I stood up and swept Coombs's legs out from under him. He fell forward, smashing more bottles as he toppled against the mirror and shelves, then fell behind the bar in a shower of glass and liquid. While he was stunned I drew my sword, and moved quickly around behind the bar again.

He uncoiled without warning, using his legs to drive his own outthrust sword at my neck. I parried by instinct, cursing myself for an overconfident fool. He kept me at bay with his sword as he recovered his footing, then moved forward. I tested his defenses, but carefully. He defended himself easily, pressing back with equal ease, driving me backward, into the room. He was grinning hugely, obviously enjoying himself.

I feinted a slash at his belly then thrust at his face. He didn't fall for it; his return stroke nearly took my hand. I barely caught it on the guard of my sword, and leapt backward. This wasn't going as I'd planned.

Coombs growled happily. "You're looking nervous, nigger," he said. "Sword getting heavy, is it? Beginning to twist in your hand when I hit it--" he smacked his blade against mine in a beat. I recovered hastily and moved back again.

"You're going to lose, nigger. I'll gut you first. Then I'll have your head off. Can you feel it? Can you imagine the feeling as I slice through your flesh with a cold steel blade?"

I threw myself forward a step, seizing the hilt of my sword with my free hand and beginning a series of two handed swipes, driving him back. I realized, as he casually parried and blocked my best attacks, that he was a much better swordsman than I.

A horrible idea occurred to me. It was a terrifying, insane thought--but one that I was unable to deny. I had one chance to take him before he decided to finish me. I had survived so far, I knew now, because he was toying with me. He enjoyed the combat and was drawing it out longer than was necessary.

I panted heavily, flushing my bloodstream with as much oxygen as possible. I had stopped advancing, and waited with my blade ready for his attack. Nerving myself, too, to take an awful risk in order to survive.

Coombs lunged forward with frightening speed, almost catching me unaware despite my vigilance. I parried a series of slashes with a decreasing margin of error, then when he thrust at my belly I moved to parry it automatically. But before I had moved my blade more than a few inches, I forced myself to halt the gesture.

The blade slid into my abdomen with little pain. I felt it puncture my stomach, could actually feel the shifting of organs as the blade pushed forward. A spark of pain now, about to erupt into a firestorm. I had a moment's grace to make this sacrifice worthwhile.

I tightened my grip on my sword with convulsive strength and threw myself into a powerful slash, a scream of agony erupting from my lips as I twisted on the sharp blade in my gut. My own blade flashed and bit into Coombs's neck, a successful attack possible only because his weapon was buried in my body, unavailable for defense.

I lurched and fell to one side, sliding free of Coombs's blade. In the silent darkness falling over me, it was remarkably painless. I didn't feel it at all when I hit the floor. Whether my counterstrike had succeeded or not, I didn't know.

* * *

I felt a sense of urgency that I could not explain. Fear of impending doom pounded in my brain, along with the fire in my belly. I tried to sit up. My fingertips twitched slightly, and the fire exploded through my body when I attempted to use the muscles of my torso.

A bubbling groan caught my attention. I turned my head and saw Coombs's face only inches away from my own. His eyes were not quite closedly. The sight of his face brought it back to me; where I was, what I had done.

Coombs lay in a large pool of blood, most of it seeming to have spilled from his neck, where a gaping wound bubbled periodically with his faint, shallow breaths. He shuddered once, and drew a bigger, bubbly breath of air The edges of the wound in his throat were already less jagged.

He would be recovering faster as the amount of damage left to correct dwindled. My own wound was likewise healing. I looked for my sword, groping for it as well with fingers that were somewhat less rebellious now. I felt it under my left hand, drying blood tacky on the leather-wrapped hilt.

Coombs drew another breath and coughed explosively.

I wrapped my fingers around the hilt of the sword.

I rolled over onto my side, crying out with pain at the motion. I could feel newly knitted flesh pulling and tearing in my midsection. Over on my knees and one elbow, the other hand twisted beneath me, clutching at the sword llike a talisman.

Coombs stirred as well. A grunting cough followed by a sigh that indicated some level of returning consciousness. I breathed deeply a few times, ignoring my pain as best I could, then--up, onto my knees, using my hand for balance now.

I glanced at Coombs again--and saw that his eyes were open, watching me. His neck wound was smaller, healing fast. He grinned weakly, his hand shifting slowly across the floor toward the hilt of his own sword.

I wrapped both hands around the hilt of my sword and lifted it slowly, gritting my teeth against the pain in my belly as damaged muscles contracted. When I had the blade upraised, I took a deep breath and then slashed downward, letting out my breath in a quick, gutteral cry of pain and anger.

The blade sliced through Coombs's neck and rang against the hardwood floor beneath. Blood pulsed weakly from his neck for a moment and then simply ran out. I released the sword, which clattered as it came to rest.

The tingling I'd felt when we first spotted one another began again, as his lifeforce began to dissipate. Miniature streamers of lightning flickered between his severed neck and his head, then began spreading out. They crawled along his torso and over his head, and skated along the expanding pool of blood, as if seeking something.

As if seeking me. When one momentary flicker of lightning touched my knee, it was repeated. Another joined it. Then several, until a steady blue glow of electrical light filled the space between us. I felt the power flowing into me, filling me and buoying me up with a glorious energy.

My pains faded away, and then my wounds. My fatigue vanished, and I felt full of vigor, ready to run a marathon or climb a mountain. I was giddy with victory, with joy at survival and pleasure in the feel of perfect health and seemingly limitless vitality. Surely life couldn't get any better.

Still it poured into me, filling reservoirs that I hardly knew I had. And when they were full, when I could contain no more, still it flowed from his body. The pleasure became more than I could bear, transmuted in an instant to pain. It blistered and scorched me. I bellowed my pain and found myself, as always, unable to resist steeling myself against the Quickening.

The streamers of power rebounded now, arcing across walls, the floors, the ceiling. The force of it shattered glass, scorched wood and filled the air with the smell of ozone. Always, though, it returned to pummel me, demanding entrance where at first I had welcomed it. The Quickening pummeled me, picked me up bodily and dashed me to the floor repeatedly.

It lasted an eternity, as always. When it was done, the Quickening dropped me to the floor, a smoking husk--or so it felt. I climbed uneasily to my feet, sword again in hand. I moved around the bar and retrieved my handgun. No sirens were audible, but that might mean only that the police were approaching silently. It was time to leave, now that I'd slain Coombs.

I pushed open the door of the strip joint and stepped out into the sunshine. A crowd of gawkers retreated frantically at my appearance but didn't run, caught between their fear of injury or death and their monkey curiosity about the violence. I walked over to my car and tossed my sword into the back seat, then climbed in.

The engine fired immediately and I pulled calmly out into the street and drove away, pursued on foot by a handful of witnesses who followed long enough to study the license plate. I'd abandon this car a mile or so down the road and find another. They'd get the excitement of being witnesses, but would cause me no real inconvenience.

I'd be in New York City in less than twelve hours. Time enough for Coombs' Quickening to settle, for me to assimilate his identity and reap what I could from that legacy. Fasil was in New York, and Connor MacLeod. Fasil was the easier target, though. I'd take him first, add his power to my own, and then MacLeod, learn from what they had seen. 

And then, at last, the Kurgan and the power and the glory that was the Prize.

\----------  
HYMN by Ultravox  
\----------  
Give us this day all that you showed me  
The power and the glory, till my kingdom comes

Chorus:  
Give us this day all that you showed me  
The power and the glory, till my kingdom comes  
Give me all the storybook told me  
The faith and the glory till my kingdom comes

And they say that in our time  
All that's good will fall from grace  
Even saints would turn their face  
In our time  
And they told us that in our days  
Different words said in different ways  
Have other meanings from he who says  
In our time

Chorus

And they say that in our time  
We would reap from their legacy  
We would learn from what they had seen  
In our time  
And they told us that in our days  
We would know what was high on high  
We would follow and not defy  
In our time

Chorus

Faithless in faith  
We must behold the things we see

Chorus

Chorus

Chorus

**Author's Note:**

> Though recently posted, this was one of my earliest fan works, written when I had moved to Portland not all that long before. The Brown Jug actually existed at the time, much as described, but not with that name. It was written for a Highlander Lyric Wheel.
> 
> Lyric Wheels were fanfic-writing round robins in which each participant sent one of the other participants a set of lyrics--usually (but not always) chosen based on a theme of some kind. The individual receiving the lyrics wrote a short story based on the lyrics, or at least sparked by them. At the appointed time, everyone posted the resulting stories to the lyric wheel forum for all to enjoy. They were a lot of fun, though I don't think they happen anymore. Or not in any fandoms I'm following, at least.


End file.
